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Report - Fort Gilkicker, Gosport, March 25th, 2015

28DL Full Member

Ventured down to this place during the jaunt down to Portsmouth with wobs92 in March. The place is pretty easy to find and made a nice precursor to our visit to a well known abandoned hospital in the area. With the sun shining strong, we made our way up the mound and found our way in. The whole place has seen far better days and although there were signs saying it was too dangerous to be there, we made our way down the structure via the rusting staircase. The place is magnificent and we spent a good hour mooching about in there. A word of warning though...Pigeons!!! Tonnes of them. If you go in the part that faces inland in particular, they are everywhere. And so is their faeces, so do take care in there and watch out for them freaking out as you walk by.

Here's a brief history of the place

The Fort, a Grade II Listed Building and Scheduled Ancient Monument, is a unique piece of Victorian engineering and of immense importance to the history of coastal defence in the United Kingdom.

Fort Gilkicker is a Palmerstone Fort, so called because it was commissioned in the 19th century by the then Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, as a gun battery to protect the waters around Portsmouth, which was the most important deep sea anchorage in the British Empire, from the threat of invasion.

Built on the site of the earlier Fort Monckton Auxiliary Battery, construction commenced in 1863 and was completed in 1871. It consisted of 22 gun emplacements in a semi-circular series of granite-faced casemates designed to sweep the approaches to Portsmouth harbour with devastating gun fire.

Fort Gilkicker was stood down in 1956 when Coastal Defence was abolished. From then on it served as workshops and was acquired by Hampshire County Council in 1986.

The Fort is still the property of Hampshire County Council and is awaiting proposals to convert it for modern use in order to secure it for the enjoyment of future generations. There are no proposals to open the fort for public access.